The Creation ala Louis L’Amour - by Gary Fuller

Riding along in the low country, a soul tends to hanker for the far off hills. Ain’t nothing like a saddle beneath you, strapped to some fine horseflesh and the inverted bowl of blue velvet overhead. Warm sunshine tends to wash the soul and fill a heart longing for human company.

He, the Good Lord, began to cipher all it would take to make this happen for the cowboy that’d be set in time and space, and, suddenly, He began to speak the whole durn shootin match into existence. He had mighty broad shoulders and narrow hips, with efficient muscles showing from underneath a white burlap robe, yet it was the voice that thundered all into existence. ‘Course, that knowing mind had planned it all out first. So, with nary but a word, He formed the clay that would bear hoof falls for thousands of years to come and then He bladed that ground with green grass to sustain all sorts of beasts, particularly the horse.

The peaks of the far blue mountains, He stretched clear up to the azure skies, such a sight it was that the word “good” caught in His throat before escaping into the breeze. Deep inside the hills, He placed the oro and the plata that would cause fallen hearts to covet for their rich beauty. Directly, with an artist’s touch, He carved the vales and canyons, the caverns, depressions, tinejas, sloughs and trenches which would hold the life source for many an animal and Indian.

Separating the restlessness of day from the convalescence of nighttime, the Great Spirit above spread the stars in abundance throughout the skies and from horizon to horizon. They would serve to direct sailors on the sea, natives in the jungle, cowpokes on the range and magi in the desert. He parlayed that great yellow orb into being so’s a body could see proper to mend fence, ride herd or assess horse flesh or a pert gal, ever which a feller would fancy to ‘preciate.

By time it all came to pass, all the worlds were fashioned. Supplies were laid up for a good spell. The high valleys were populated with deer and mountain sheep and flowers that’d make a chap’s eyes pop clear outta his head. Trees were grown that’d take six hombres hand in hand to stretch around, so’s lumber would be t’hand for a sturdy built cabin and a split wood fence to contain the livestock gettin’ fattened up for sale.

Then, if’n that Heavenly Feller’s works tweren’t enough for an eternity of wonder, He up and made a bloke so rough and ready that he’d wear leather out from the inside first! But, knowin that that poke would need someone, at the end of a long day of eatin dust and forming blisters, someone a’fixin him a slab of beef, coffee that’d raise the hair on top of your goose bumps and a pipin’ hot apple pie thick as a wood plank an’ sweeter than a honeysuckle. He done outdid His own self by making a girl so purdy she’d make your toes curl in your pointy boots! He brought that there filly, fashioned from the poke’s rib, right to him in her curvy birthday suit. The cowboy done swallered real hard and exclaimed, Whoa, man! And the Good Lord, He said, “That’s good!”